How to Use Google Social Search

Google Social Search

Google social search has launched but many of us still don’t know what exactly it is or how to use it. Well, Google Social Search’s update known as “Search Plus Your Worlds,” blends regular search results with public Google Plus Pages.

Google Social Search | How it Changes Search

Google launched the social search update just last week on January 10 with their primary objective being to blend your normal search results with results of content that their friends or people in their Circles have shared as well. Google hopes that this will give users a more personalized search experience. Of course you’ll need to be logged into your Google+ account in order to experience Google social search.

The downside here is that posts that your friends shared on other social media sites like Facebook or Twitter for instance will not show up in the results. This is where Google holds a kind of monopoly on social search that their competitors are definitely not happy about. As a matter of fact it only configures with Google+ and Picasa Web photo upload and share site.

Google Social Search | Google’s Response

We found an interesting statement by Google+ Community Manager Denis Labelle on Google social search in one of his recent blog posts.

We’re transforming Google into a search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships. We began this transformation with Social Search, and today we’re taking another big step in this direction by introducing three new features:

Personal Results, which enable you to find information just for you, such as Google+ photos and posts—both your own and those shared specifically with you, that only you will be able to see on your results page;

Profiles in Search, both in autocomplete and results, which enable you to immediately find people you’re close to or might be interested in following;

Google Social Search | Custom Results

We trust our friend’s opinions and experience much more than an advertisement or random web postings. That’s why Google social search is so amazing, Black Box Social Media explains why:

Google+ posts. You can find relevant Google+ posts from friends talking about an amazing trip they just took, whether they’ve shared privately with you or publicly. You’ll find links shared by your friends, such as activities, restaurants and other things they enjoyed on their trip.

Photos. You can find beautiful vacation photos from your friends right in your search results page. You can also find your own private photos from Google+ and Picasa, based on captions, comments and album title.

Google Social Search | Prominent People

One cool feature of Google social search that I really like is that you can type in something like “bebop jazz” and it will give you a list of the most prominent figureheads in that particular genre and then you can easily add these people to your Circles. Of course it works with a lot of other things besides music, so if you are looking for influential people in your niche market you can easily find them as well by typing in your industry name.

Google social search is definitely going to make searching for content a much more personalized experience we are looking forward to reporting further updates on the service.